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What if you only had to think about meal planning once a month?
What if someone did your grocery shopping for you?
What if you were able to have your family help you prepare dinner a few nights a week?
You can do it! For real- it is possible!
Follow these steps to make your dinner planning so much easier!
1. Recipe Binder
2. Google calendar
3. Grocery lists using curbside delivery or home delivery (I used Fred Meyer/Kroger)
1.Recipe Binder
- Consider the meals that you and your family eat on a regular basis. What about family recipes that have been around for generations? Print out your tried and true recipes and place them in a binder using sheet protectors. I'm a huge fan of storing everything in the cloud so I never lose it and I can access it when I'm away from home. Consider scanning or saving your recipes in google drive or something similar.
- A recipe binder makes it easy for other family members to prepare the meals chosen for the week. There is no guesswork about ingredients, cooking times or temperatures.
- A binder with a clear plastic covering is best for this. It will allow you to slide your google calendar into the cover.
2. Google Calendar
- Using your calendar app, create a new calendar just for meal planning. Also include your calendar for appointments, special events, and holidays.
- Consider which days are your busiest. These are days to choose your easiest recipes or those that can be made ahead.
- Does your family enjoy, "Taco Tuesday," "Take-out Thursday," "Pizza Friday" or something similar? Place these meals into your calendar. Consider having themes for the other days of the week as well to avoid repetition and to make life easier. For example, I have chosen to have something savory and comforting on Mondays- because----Mondays! Tuesdays are Mexican food, Wednesdays are Asian food, Thursdays are easier and are usually sandwiches or salads and Fridays are Italian. This makes planning very easy!
- Fill out your calendar and don't worry if you repeat recipes! These are for you! Don't worry about making this fancy or about impressing your friends.
- Set a recurring task in google calendar to remind you to order your groceries each week. You can also set this up as an appointment which will allow you to indicate which grocery list to load into your cart (more on this later).
3. Curbside Delivery/ Home delivery and in-person shopping
I discovered Fred Meyer's Clicklist a couple years ago. I have adored it ever since and even more so since COVID. I know that several other grocery stores offer this service but I prefer Fred Meyer because the service allows you to save grocery lists! Now, if you don't want to use curbside delivery, you can print off these lists and use them for in-person shopping. Kroger includes the aisles for your items which makes for easy shopping!
Even though the created and saved lists will save you a significant amount of time longterm, it is a lot of work upfront. I'd hate for you to lose everything. I did all of my lists over a couple of hours. However, if that is too much or you don't have the time, do it each week and save your lists. This way, when your rotation is done, you can go back and use these lists again and again. Include these lists in your binder.
- Label your calendar by each week that you choose to include in your plan. For example, the first week of October might be "A", week 2 would be "B", etc.
- Create separate grocery lists for each week and save them by the label, the number of meals included in the week, and anything else that might be helpful to you. One of my weeks includes Halloween and we will have pizza that night, leftovers another night. I labeled this week as (4 meals) so that I will remember this if I choose to use this week/ list again later in the year.
- Create lists by logging into your account, scroll down to "lists" and click on "create list." To add items to your list, click on the small notepad icon- highlighted in yellow.
- Set a routine to order your groceries the same day each week. On this day, log into your account, choose the list corresponding to the label for your week and add everything to the cart.
- Take inventory of what you already have or if you have decided to add or cut any meals for the week. Make adjustments to your cart (not your list). This way, your list will include everything you will need if you choose to use this list again later in the year.
- I also created a list of frequently recurring household items that we order each week. Our list includes bananas, water, paper products, etc. We use a milkman but if you don't, include staples like milk, eggs, bread, etc. You can click on this list and add the contents to your cart with the previously added items for your week.
- Access to produce will change with the seasons. Your schedule and routines will change as well. Keep this in mind and give yourself grace. Nothing is set in stone with this method. It can be changed each week to meet your needs.
- It might also be helpful to save your lists by recipe. For example, we love to have beef stew in the colder months. Since this repeats a few times within my 6-week rotation, it could be helpful to have a separate list to click on to add to my cart.
Again, this does not need to be done all at once. You can build these tools as you go. Not only will this save you a ton of time in the long run, but it will also allow you to buy in bulk when needed, search for coupons or deals at other stores and everyone will know exactly what is for dinner! Kroger provides the total cost for each list which can help you to budget and make tweaks as necessary. Shopping online reduces impulsive purchases and cuts back on waste. Don't forget to keep additional canned goods, condiments, and non-perishables on hand in the event of an emergency. You can always cycle these items out and donate them to the local foodbank or charity of your choice.
